A confidently original, engrossing interpretation, with a seriously thought-through (but never self-serious) aesthetic point of view that announces, from the get-go, someone who knows what he's doing is running the show.

It's still an old-school superhero summer movie, the plotting tortuous, the characters relegated to one-scene-one-emotion simplicity, the digitized action a never ending club mix of chases and mano a manos.

Nolan turns Batman Begins into something much closer to Miller's 'Dark Knight' interpretation than the glamorous, slam-bang Hollywood jokefests into which the series had slipped by Batman and Robin time.

An undeniable return to good form for the enduring comic book hero, an industrial-strength summer-action flick fantasia that manages to capture the excitement of the early Batman films while working in a decidedly darker tone.